The Benefits of Display Advertising

When advertising your business, there are three important factors to consider: visual appeal to grab attention, location to maximize exposure, and relevancy to improve response. This is why display advertising has become a popular practice in digital marketing today. With its visual and targeting capabilities, display ads offer many benefits to a business, from visibility to brand awareness. This post goes over the basics of what display ads are and how they can benefit your business.

What Are Display Ads?

Display ads are the paid advertisements that appear in front of users on website pages in the form of graphics. Display ads are different from Search Engine Marketing/Pay Per Click/ Paid Search ads, which appear on search engine results pages. This means that PPC ads appear only when a person is searching, and display ads appear when a person is surfing. However, display ads technically do still appear when a person is searching, because people often visit the web pages that show up in their search results. Display ad are commonly referred to as banner ads, but they don’t always take exact banner form. They graphics that can be a smaller square or rectangle, and can appear on the top, middle, or side of a web page.

Benefits of Display Ads

Display Ads are Visually Appealing

One of the first benefits of display ads is that, because they are graphic content, they can be designed and styled. Regular SEM ads (Search Engine Marketing ads)are text only and with character counts, limiting how effectively and quickly you are able to capture attention and convey your message. With display ads, you can use graphics, video, audio, and your company’s branding to stand out to users and attract their attention.

Display Ads Support Brand Awareness

The visual component of display ads also benefits your business by facilitating brand awareness. With a PPC ad, users have to read the text on the ad and then click through to a landing page to learn about the business and its offer. Since display ads are branded and styled, often with an offer, a user can gather information on your brand simply by seeing your display ad, no click necessary.

Effectively Target with Display Ads

When online advertising, it is important to target the people most relevant to your business. Just as with SEM and Facebook Ad targeting, you can create specific parameters for your display ads: which sites they appear on, which geographic area they appear in, which demographic or niche market they appear to. For example, a car dealership can target people of driving age who live in their zip code and are visiting auto-related websites. The benefit of targeting your display ads is that you can maximize your spend.

Increase Your Visibility with Display Ads

Although display ads target specific audiences, this does not mean they limit the visibility of your business online. Display ads give you the ability to appear on websites that are not only highly trafficked, but which are also related to the offer of your ad. Display ads benefit your business by getting you in front of a high volume of the right people, even if they’re not searching.

Display Ads Provide Data

It is important to be able to measure your marketing activities, such as by using Google Analytics, to track their performance. Display advertising platforms offer this benefit to your business. With the data it provides, you can know exactly how many times your ad or ads have been clicked. Being able to track your investment allows you to ensure you are getting the most out of it.

Display Ads Support Retargeting

In addition to standard targeting capabilities, display advertising also allows for retargeting. With retargeting, you can put your ad in front of people who have previously visited your website. This is a way to reach out to people who have expressed interest in your business, and who could still be considering your business.

Display ads benefit your business by reaching more members of your target audience and in a more impactful manner. Start taking advantage of imagery and relevancy today with this effective advertising strategy!

Kristen is the Content Marketing Manager for ThriveHive, where she geeks out daily over SEO, organic traffic, and A/B testing. When she's not equipping business owners and marketers to get their name out there through effective content, she's out pedaling the streets of Boston on her beloved bike.